Developments of digital twin technologies in industrial, smart city and healthcare sectors: a survey

Digitization and digitalization have already changed our world significantly. Further disruptions are imminent with the ongoing digital transformation, a major component of which is digital twins. As the big data techniques, Internet of Things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence algorithms advance, the digital twin technology has entered a phase of rapid development. It has been stated to be one of the top ten most promising technologies. Although it is still in its early stages, digital twins are already being widely used in a variety of fields, especially in industry, smart cities, and smart health, which are points that attract most researchers to study. In the literature, there can be seen numerous articles and reviews on digital twins, published every year in these three fields. It is therefore timely, even necessary, to provide an analysis of the published work. This is the motivation behind this article, the focus of which is the major research and application areas of digital twins. The survey first analyzes the recent developments of digital twins, then summarizes the theoretical underpinnings of the technology, and finally concludes with specific developments in various application areas of digital twins. It also discusses the challenges that may be encountered in the future.